How to honor King's legacy: Stop ignoring injustice
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter" said Dr. Martin Luther King, whose birthday we celebrated this week. He and other wise women and men have pointed out the folly of ignoring injustice. But we as humanity continue to do so.
A common fault of human nature is to turn our eyes look the other way. I am as guilty of this as any. I can't count the number of times I have walked past a homeless person on Michigan Avenue or State Street or have lamented on the economic, social and healthcare inequity in the society I live in, the greater Chicago area but have done nothing about it.
I am aware but have looked away. I rationalize, it is not my fault, or there isn't much I can do as an individual.
This fault of ignoring injustice gets magnified on a world stage.
The small but brutal country of Myanmar has ethnically wiped out the poor and weak Rohingya community with little or no price to pay. Both the military dictatorship and civil society including Aung San Suu Kyi played a role. Suu Kyi should not be in jail for opposing the military regime but should be held accountable for not only turning her eyes away from brazen atrocities in her country but claiming they never happened. As dramatic a case of moral blindness as ever.
The Chinese government's treatment of Uighurs is different but more diabolical and sinister. Not only have they used the age-old tactics of mass incarceration, labeled re-education camps, but have systematically destroyed the Uighurs' Turkish Muslim culture and through forced sterilization are aggressively reducing their numbers. The world community is now fully aware of it. Western governments including the United States have spoken out against it but have not taken any action.
This is better than most Muslim majority countries that have remained silent. The reason appears to be China's economic clout. China is the world's factory and, increasingly, its largest money lender. Through its large investments in the Belt and Roads program, it has given so much money to many countries that it has virtually stuffed their mouths and covered their eyes with Yuans.
Private multinationals continue to deal with China as they have no immediate alternative. Apple continues to make its products in China and Tesla is making its cars in Shanghai and opened a dealership in Xinjiang, the epicenter of atrocities against the Uighur Muslim minority. They can take a moral stand and move out of China, but they look at business as an amoral enterprise answerable to profits. If businesses are not directly involved with oppression, they feel they can turn their eyes away.
Personally, the most painful example of a country inexorably slipping toward the potential genocide of a Muslim minority is the country of my birth, India. A country that chose to be democratic and pluralistic, has a history of inclusiveness of the "other" and boasts leaders like Gandhi, Nehru, Abul Kalam Azad and Ambedkar, is now in the death throes of a struggle for its very soul.
Using its majority in the national assembly, the right-wing Hindu party, the BJP, has rammed through legislation that severely limits freedom of religion. Christian churches have been attacked under the false accusation that they are converting naïve Hindus through bribery and other nefarious means. Muslims are accused of seducing innocent Hindu women to marry and convert to Islam.
The connivance of local law and administration has emboldened right-wing Hindu goons to go on a spree of mob lynching Muslims. The abhorrent exercise of public lynching that mercifully is part of the past in the U.S., is current and becoming more prevalent in India. Open incitement for killing of Muslims by some Hindu religious figures has met with a nod and a wink.
In fact, the ruling party in its election campaign in Uttar Pradesh and other states is using anti-Muslim hate speech as a way of getting votes. Appease the Hindus by abusing the Muslim has proven an effective election tactic in the past. The opposition parties are afraid to speak up as they would be blamed of Muslim appeasement and lose their chance of regaining power.
The entire country, not just politicians, but the judiciary and the middle class, in and outside India, pretends as if nothing is happening. Hundreds of millions of eyes have turned away from the specter of Muslim genocide when all the signs are there.
A minority of Indian activists like Arundhati Roy, Ram Punyani and Margaret Alva have spoken up. Harsh Mander, another activist, has written a book on this human fault titled "Looking Away: Inequality, Prejudice and Indifference."
It would be a nice tribute to Martin Luther King if we took a pledge not to look away from injustice.
• Javeed Akhter is a physician and freelance writer from Oak Brook.